In outdoor applications, it is known to pot the terminals of electrical components for protection against the elements. A common type of terminal is a wire-wrap terminal in which wire is wrapped around a pin-like terminal tail. The wire-wrap tail section of a terminal must be long enough to wrap at least one wire around the terminal. Where double wire-wraps are used, the tail section must provide adequate length for wrapping two wires around the terminal. The potting material should fully cover the wrapped terminal tails. As such, more potting material is required to cover longer, double wire-wrap terminals.
FIG. 1A shows a base 10 which carries one or more components 20 having wire-wrap terminal tails 21. The components 20 are seated in receptacles 11 on the upper surface of the base 10. A trough space 12 is formed between adjacent receptacles 11 (or rows of receptacles). The space 12 is typically used for running wires therethrough. The terminal tails 21 of the components 20 protrude through openings 14 in the base 10 into a bottom cavity 13 of the base 10.
As shown in FIG. 1B, potting material 15 is deposited in the cavity 13, completely covering the terminal tails 21. Naturally, the potting material 15 would be deposited after the terminal tails 21 have been wired. (The wires have been omitted from the drawings for clarity.)
The known arrangement of FIGS. 1A and 1B suffers from several drawbacks. First, a large amount of potting material is required to fill the cavity and cover the terminal tails 21.
Furthermore, the deposited potting material 15 can take a significant amount of time to cure. The curing time of any potting material increases with the thickness of the potting material used. The potting material will tend to cure from the outside in; i.e, the exposed surfaces of the potting material will cure before the interior of the potting material.
The aforementioned problems are particularly true in applications using extra long terminal tails 21, such as double wire-wrap terminals.